save their male children alive, they and their families should be destroyed. This was a severe affliction, indeed, to those that suffered it, not only as they were deprived of their sons, and while they were the parents themselves they were obliged to be subservient to the destruction of their own children, but as it was to be supposed to tend to the extirpation of their nation; while upon the destruction of their children, and their own gradual dissolution, the calamity would become very hard and inconsolable. Such was the ill state they were in; but no one can overthrow the purposes of God, though he contrive ten thousand subtile devices for that end; for this child, whom the sacred scribe foretold, was brought up, and concealed from the observers appointed by the king; and he that foretold him did not mistake in the consequences of his preservation, which were brought to pass under a singular manner:

A man, whose name was Amram, one of the nobler sort of the Hebrews, was afraid of his whole nation lest it should fail, by the want of young men to be brought up hereoccasion told a lie; but there is no reason for such a supposition, though possibly they might conceal some part of the truth, which is not unlawful, but highly commendable, when it is to preserve the innocent; for many of the Hebrew women might be such as are here described, though not every one of them. The answer of the midwives therefore is so far from being a sneaking lie to save their lives, that it is a bold confession of their faith and piety, to the hazard of them, viz. that they saw so plain an evidence of the wonderful hand of God, in that extraordinary vigour in the travail of the women, that do what Pharaoh would, they durst not, would not, strive against it, because they would not strive against God. Lightfoot's Sermons on 2 Sam. xix. 29. The making the midwives houses, is, by most interpreters ascribed to God, and the thing is supposed to have been done in a metaphorical sense, i. e. God gave them a numerous offspring or family, and a very lasting succession or posterity. For there are five things, say they, which go to complete the greatness or eminence of a family, as such; its largeness, its wealth, its honours, its power, and its duration. And therefore since the midwives hazarded their own lives to save those of the Hebrew children, and to preserve the Israelites a numerous progeny and posterity, the God of Israel, in return, not only made their own lives long and prosperous, but gave them very numerous families, and an enduring posterity, in whom they might be said to live after death, even from generation to generation. But all this is a very forced construction, and what the original words will by no means bear. We should therefore rather think, these houses were built, not for the midwives, but for the Israelites, and that it was not God, but Pharaoh, who built them. The case seems to be this :-Pharaoh had charged the mid

after, and was very uneasy at it, his wife being then with child, and he knew not what to do; hereupon he betook himself to prayer to God, and intreated him to have compassion on those men who had no ways transgressed the laws of his worship, and to afford them deliverance from the miseries they at that time endured, and to render abortive their enemies' hope of the destruction of their nation. Accordingly God had mercy on him, and was moved by his supplication; he stood by him in his sleep, and exhorted him not to despair of his future favours. He said farther, that he did not forget their piety towards him, and would always reward them for it; as he had formerly granted his favour to their forefathers, and made them increase from a few to so great a multitude. He reminded him, that when Abraham was come alone out of Mesopotamia into Canaan, he had been made happy, not only in other respects, but that when his wife was at first barren, she was afterward by him enabled to conceive seed, and bare him sons; that he left to Ishmael, and to his posterity, the country of Arabia:

wives to kill the male children that were born of the Hebrew women; the midwives feared God, omitted to do what the king had commanded them, pretending in excuse for their omission, that the Hebrew women were generally delivered before they could get to them. Pharaoh hereupon resolving to prevent their increase, gave charge to his people to have all the male children of the Hebrews thrown into the river; but his command could not be strictly executed, whilst the Israelites lived up and down the fields in tents, which was their ancient and customary way of living; for they would shift here and there, and lodge the women in childbed out of the way, to save their children. Pharaoh therefore built them houses, and obliged them to a more settled habitation, that the people whom he had set over them, might know where to find every family, and to take an account of all the children that should be born. So that this was a very cunning contrivance of Pharaoh, in order to have his charge more strictly and effectually executed than it could otherwise have been done; and was a particular too remarkable not to be inserted in Moses's account of this affair. The only seeming difficulty is, to reconcile the words to the text in what has been here advanced; but this will be none at all, if the words be rightly translated, and the verses rightly distinguished in this manner. Exod. i. 20. And God dwelt with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty, and this happened, (or was so, or came to pass,) because the midwives feared God, ver. 21, 22. And Pharaoh built them (i. e. Israelites) houses, and charged all his people, saying, every son that is born, ye shall cast into the rivers, and every daughter ye shall save alive. Shuckford's Connection, vol. ii. 1. 7. B.